Edward Norton on Marlon Brando's Influence | Joe Rogan

I also think there's a funny thing, which is there's this history of famous actors, right? So, and I do think it sort of begins with Brando, because Brando had such an enormous effect on the psychology of men in America. He really liked, and if you look at what I would call like the great generation of American actors, the Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Robert Duval, Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Morgan Freeman, Meryl Streep, like just, you know, the whole, that's all like the post-Brando generation. All of those people, literally all of them wanted to become actors because of Marlon Brando. And he so rewrote the idea of what it was, what it could be, that you had got a whole, it was like what Bob Dylan did in the culture. It was like it rewrote, like it just rewrote the game almost. Or like what Lenny did with comics. Yeah, absolutely. Lenny Bruce and... And there are these people who come and they have like a kind of a permanent, they're a permanent before and after in a certain kind of field, you know what I mean? Hendricks with the guitar. And yeah, yeah, yes, I would say so. I would say so in rock guitar, yeah. Although it is interesting when you go back and look at rock in that era. There's that famous story of, I think of, I don't remember if it's like Pete Townsend making Eric Clapton come with him to hear Hendricks and Clapton crying. Yes, I heard that story. But you also can't discount Clapton in, you know, there's those famous photos of the wall Clapton as God, like, there's, it's hard to like, you can't really underrate what Clapton did to guitar and guitar, you know, in that era too. Right, no, he was phenomenal, but it was a different thing. Yeah, it was a different thing. Yeah, Timmy Hendricks was a protean. He seemed like he broke through to a new dimension. Yeah, I agree. He popped through the membrane of existence into this new sound. And there's guys that are, like, there's people that have a distinct sound, like, are you a Gary Clark Jr. fan? No, I can't. Gary Clark Jr. is a phenomenal blues guitarist. Okay. And he has a sound that's almost instantaneously recognizable as Gary Clark Jr. You hear him and you go, oh my God, there it is. Everyone who works with him is just like, they just walk away sweating, just going Jesus Christ. Well. It's phenomenal. I feel that way about Willie Nelson. I think Willie Nelson is legitimately in country music like there's before and after Willie Nelson. And you can say that Hank Williams Jr. or whatever that he, but Willie Nelson to me is the hinge around which it goes from being something that had, you know, it had a Nashville kind of grand old Opry kind of polished to it. And he basically took it, he reclaimed it as this like American roots thing and put jazz in it. That's what's so crazy is anyone who plays music knows like Willie Nelson is essentially a jazz guitar player. Like, and he's, you know, Red Headed Stranger is, to me, that's a before and after kind of a thing too. Like, there's that whole outlaw thing. And I think there's a whole lot of, it's almost like after that there's two camps. There's still going to be like the, you know, the Steve Earl in his Copperhead Road thing is more the posh thing. But then there's like Steve Earl roots, Steve Earl, you know what I mean? It's like he almost like straddled it. But my point about Brando was just that like he changed the idea of the type of person that male actors wanted to be. Suddenly it was like they wanted to have like patina or as a visceral. They wanted to be visceral, not polished. They wanted to be muscular. They wanted to be masculine. They wanted to be, you know, intense. Like those were not the kind of words that people, when you think back on like Jimmy Stewart carried Grant, like that is not what movie stars were aspiring to. They were aspiring to polish a kind of a polish before Brando and after Brando. There's something to his performances where you go, oh, well, this is more like real life than a fit like on the waterfront. Like I could have been a contender thing. Like when he's doing that, you're like, well, this is how someone would actually behave if they felt like their life had been a disaster and it could have been avoided. Well, you just hit on something though that drives me nuts because when people sort of talk about Brando, they're like, you know, they're sort of the like the Stanley Kowalsek. The the brutal masculinity, etc. The thing about Brando is he is beautiful. He's and he's kind of this enormous Roman looking guy. But it's where he kills where he really kills is this kind of broken sensitivity that he had. And and I could have been a contender is not a tough guy speech. It's the opposite. It's a broken tough guy. It's a guy practically crying saying like you know, you know, I'm not a tough guy. I'm like, you were my you were my brother and you should have looked out for me. I needed you looking out for me. And my life is my life's gone down the toilet because of that in that moment. You didn't look out for me. It's you know, it's it's like tearful. It's not. And and even even the best moment of Stanley Kowalski and streetcar is is really it's like when he falls on his knees in front of his wife and cries. You know what I mean? It's like that's what he he was way better in in a lot of ways to me. It's the fact that he was actually kind of in touch with his emotional life. It's not that he was right. So macho at all. It's that he he looked that way. But he was but he actually had this like poetic sensitivity. Yes. And it was it. It resonated real like it felt real. Yeah. If you watch actors before him, there was a certain undeniable theatrical element to what they were doing that was like, oh, this guy's acting. Yeah. Whereas he was he seemed like a guy who was really living the scene. Yeah. Yeah. And some of it it's sometimes I think it sounds like say the instrument of a person. But he he has this crazy. He's he looks the way he looks. But he's got this marble mouth. He does. He's not articulate. He doesn't come off as like there's a mushiness to the way he speaks and kind of a. Yeah, it it it doesn't have style. The guys before that it was you felt there. You felt that they were working on their style. And and he seemed to be sort of like scratching his ribs and and mumbling and and. You know, in a t-shirt and he just was he was kind of present in the moment. I think it was all accentuated by the way he ended his life like the end of his life. He was enormous. Yeah. Gigantic fat guy. And he just just given in to all of his vices. And he was just this guy. He was a beautiful man. Yeah. He just didn't seem to give a fuck about that at all. Yeah. I think he said something to me one time about how how much he was enjoying his life when he was like 23. And and he's like I you know, even when he was doing the play Streetcar that made him famous, he was telling me like he would get with his pal Diego and go up to Harlem, go to clubs and hit on girls and all these things. And and I said, you weren't aware of what was going on, you know, and he goes, well, there was I was aware of a certain amount of noise rising. And then one day I woke up and I was sitting on a pile of candy. That's what he and and I thought, what a really wild way to say it. And I do think I'm not even joking to me. It's like what you said. It was like after that, they were just it was like there was no boundaries. He was like he was getting every everything was. He he wasn't going to be able to resist. He wasn't disciplined. Yeah, he wasn't a super disciplined person. He was a very poetic person. And I don't think he was disciplined. And I think that a lot of what happened, you know, he had something like 17 children and and he got, you know, he had appetites and he had these things. And I I think that I do think that he struggled struggled to to deal with all the things that came with being that famous. Yeah. And being that famous when there wasn't really a lot of examples of how to do it right or wrong before you. Yeah. It's sort of the Elvis thing, right? Yeah, it's the Elvis thing.